Seagate has struck another blow in the areal density wars. The company has revved up its 1TB FreeAgent portable drive, shrinking it internally from three platters to two, making it cheaper to manufacture.
The original 1TB FreeAgent GoFlex - the SSTAA1000100 - had a 3-platter, 2.5-inch hard drive inside with a 334GB/platter …

COMMENTS

Not backup quality?

There seems to be a developing trend for manufacturers to sell their latest drives in consumer USB disk packages before shipping them as internal drives. Might this be a sort of post-beta testing, on people who are much less likely to sue if the bleeding-edge tech proves less than perfectly reliable?

Anyway, my warning is that "random" USB drives are not a good choice for backing up important data. Build your own using a marketed internal SATA drive with a 3 or 5 year warranty and a USB enclosure. Better still don't risk your data through a cheap "random" SATA to USB chip. Use E-SATA, or a SATA drive in a swappable caddy.

I think it is all about sales...

PCs have changed - they are now disposable home electrics, like a toaster or a coffee maker. The way the economics look, most people simply don't build their own machines any more, even hobbyists. Sure, SOME of us will put in new storage, but overall the sales from that market are minuscule to the sales Seagate makes to systems builders like Dell, Acer, etc.

Most people that buy storage now want something they can plug in - and THAT means, 90% of the time, USB. Most mobos in circulation don't support eSATA, as do very few laptops. I recently helped a friend increase his storage for VIDEO editing on his aging PC, and he would not even countenance any internal storage, insisted that he was going to buy a USB drive...even when I explained how much slower it would be. That's a market reality - most users today care about convenience more than speed.

Manufacturers putting their latest model drives into USB casings are probably NOT "beta testing", but most likely putting them where they have the second highest volume sales (after system builders).